Tuesday, July 29, 2014

SDCC Masquerade Project #11 - The 10th Doctor Who Suit: Completed!

So, Comic Con has come and gone, and I'm sorely behind on photos & the rest of the making of this project. So, let's recap, shall we?

About 1.5 weeks before SDCC, I was 95% done with the suit. All I needed to do was hem the pants, and put buttons onto the jacket front & jacket sleeves.

However, I had a problem. I couldn't find proper suit buttons for the outfit for days. I looked at the local fabric stores and no one had suit buttons. There were a lot of brown "crafting" buttons (for children's button crafts) and a lot of fancy buttons, but no simple suit buttons.

I didn't have time to drive around and look for buttons, so I had to order them online and hoped they would get to me in time. They didn't. Since we were driving down to SDCC, I thought I could pick up some buttons in the LA Garment District and use those temporarily, until I got the proper suit buttons.

I did sew the buttons holes on the jacket (but didn't open them up) so that all that was left was to sew on buttons.

Here's a photo of me in the nearly completed suit (sans buttons), and the David Tennant in his 10th Doctor Suit.

There are some differences, because I wasn't trying for a 100% perfect replica of the Tennat Suit, because there are major differences between our body types. I needed it to fit me well and look good enough on-stage and in-person to be recognizable as his suit.

Tennant has a long torso and long legs, whereas I do not (short waisted & short legs), so I had to make the jacket proportional to my dimensions, as well as all of the button placements

I also added side vents to the suit in addition to the back panel, because, well, I have hips and I need to be comfortable sitting & standing in the suit.

The fabric I used was fabric I had purchased for Joann's Fabrics over 5 years ago. It's not a complete match, but it's pretty damn close. It's 55% linen, 45 % rayon blend. (The Tennant Suit was 100% cotton, which explains why he looked so rumpled all the time. Although, mind you, linen isn't that much better.) Check out this link for a difference in the fabrics

I opted to do actual working sleeve buttons; Tennant's suit used faux sleeve cuffs -- in that the sleeve cuffs couldn't be opened up; the buttons were just sewn as "decoration". This makes sense from a theatrical standpoint, but I thought to diverge here.

I used a woman's cut pants pattern (see link here) because, well, I'm a girl, and I need them to fit properly. Plus, because I was running out of fabric to properly do the waist band as on the suit, I made do with slightly skewed striping.

I spent an hour in the SDCC hotel sewing on buttons for the Masquerade, which I normally hate doing. Typically, I much prefer finishing a costume for an event BEFORE the event and not have to do any work during the event. But, sewing on buttons was a simple task (although I forgot to bring backing buttons with me.

By now, you've already guessed the outfit, so I'll be renaming all of the previous topics according to: SDCC Masquerade Project - The 10th Doctor Who Suit.
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I'll have photos up from San Diego Comic Con as soon as I can!

Here are some of my resources for the making of my 10th Doctor Who (Tennant) suit.

Resource Link: Steve Rick's awesome site on making his Tennant Suit -- he's done interviews and has a lot of reference photos that were extremely helpful--- http://tennantsuit.blogspot.com/